Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting for the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, January 12, 2026. Happy New Year. Welcome back to

Matthew Ricea year of activity for us.

James FeatherFirst order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me.

Speaker 4I

James Featherpledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Matthew RiceThank you.

James FeatherNext order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued ahead of time as required. Are there any comments on the agenda?

Paul CunninghamMr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented.

Stacy SummerfieldstaffSeconded.

James FeatherIt's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentations by the public. On any matter, not calling for a public hearing. we're seeing no one wanting to speak we will move on to the next item on the agenda consideration of the december 8th 2025 meeting minutes those also were issued ahead of the meeting as required are there any comments corrections or additions mr

Kirsten Lockhartchair i move that we adopt the meeting minutes from the december 8th 2025 regular meeting as provided second

James Featherit's been moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as issued. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? None. Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Next item on the agenda are items not requiring a public hearing. We will hold elections as are required for the officers for the Planning Commission for the coming year and deal with appointments from boards and commissions and some other business. For the first item, nomination and election of Chair and Vice Chair, I will turn the process over to our esteemed Chair Emeritus, Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you, Mr. Feather. At this time, we will open nominations for the position of Chair of the Planning Commission. Are there any nominations for Chair? Mr. Rice.

Matthew RiceMr. Cunningham, we've had a very smooth three or four years under Mr. Feather's leadership. I would like to nominate Mr. Feather to serve as chair for the upcoming year.

Paul CunninghamOkay, we have a nomination. Do we have a second? I second the motion. We have a nomination and a second. Do we have any additional nominations for the chair position? Seeing none, I will close the nominations, and at this time we will take a voice vote on the election of Mr. Feather as chair. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? And abstentions? Mr. Chair, congratulations. Mr. Feather, congratulations on being re-elected chair of the Planning Commission. We will now move into the nomination and election of the vice chair. I will open the floor to nominations for the position of Vice Chair. Do we have any nominations? I move to nominate Kirsten Lockhart as Vice Chair of the Planning Commission.

Matthew RiceSecond.

Paul CunninghamWe have a nomination and a second. Do we have any additional nominations? Then I will close the nominations and we will call for again a voice vote. All in favor of Ms. Lockhart as Vice Chair signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? It is unanimous. Congratulations, Ms. Lockhart. I will now turn the floor back or the chair back over to Mr. Feather to run our meeting.

James FeatherThank you, Mr. Cunningham. Thank you very much for your support. Next order of business is appointments to boards and commissions. Annually, we need to make appointments to the Board of Architecture Review and to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. I had mentioned previously I'd agreed to continue serving as the bar representative and we'll need a nomination for that unless Mr. McCarthy or somebody would like to fill in but we can talk later about picking up when I'm not going to be able to serve

Paul CunninghamI move that Mr. Feather be nominated as the representative from the Planning Commission to the Board of Architecture Review

James FeatherAll right. Any others? No nominations? I think there are none.

Matthew RiceSo I'm happy to continue serving on prep if anyone wants to nominate. We'll

James Feathervote on the bar first and then do that. All those in favor of my appointment back to the bar signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Nominations for the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. Mr.

Paul CunninghamI nominate.

James FeatherMr. Rice has agreed to serve. He's done wonderfully.

Paul CunninghamI nominate Mr. Rice for reappointment as the representative to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. Second.

James FeatherMoved and seconded to appoint Mr. Rice, the good Dr. Rice, to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. Are there other nominations? Seeing none, voice vote please. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. Passes unanimously. Thank you for agreeing to continue to serve Mr. Rice. Next order of business is review of the Planning Commission bylaws. We have a brief staff report by Mr. Napty.

NaptystaffThank you, Chair Feather, members of the Planning Commission. the bylaws are required to be reviewed every two years as stated by the bylaws and so these were last reviewed in January of 2024

Speaker 4the bylaws are included

Matthew Ricein your staff report

Naptystaffso hopefully you had a chance to take a look through those and see if you want to make any amendments as stated in the staff report the last changes to the bylaws were made in 2022 but before that no changes have been made since 2012. The changes that were made in 2022 related to the remote participation policy, which was fairly new at that time. There have been changes to state code to include that, and there are some requirements about how that had to operate, so we incorporated those to the bylaws. And then the planning commissioners had some other recommended changes based on the way things had changes in operation over the course of the years. So the rest of those listed there were all requests that were made by the planning commissioners.

So I will turn it over to the Planning Commission to see if there are any portions of the bylaws that you would like to consider changing this year.

James FeatherOpen up for comments or ideas or thoughts from the commissioners.

Paul CunninghamI have no comments or need to make changes. I believe they're adequate as they stand at the moment.

James FeatherThoughts from others? I did send a question to Mr. Napty that may require a little bit of research, but I don't think it's anything that warrants a particular change right now. A little bit of clarity may be appropriate at some point in the future related to the kinds of things that the Planning Commission reviews. Let me just look at my exact words. Under responsibilities, the bylaws state that the Commission is to review new streets infrastructure for conformity with the comprehensive plan. I noted that new streets does not say public streets. So at some point, we thought it might be good to get a clarification on whether that's to include both public and private streets or not, since public buildings and infrastructure specifically called out, but streets does not say public or otherwise.

So Mr. Napty agreed to have a conversation with the city attorney to see what the real intent might be. That could be just a brief clarification that might be needed in the future. There aren't that many private streets that go in with developments in the city that we don't see. There are some. When I think of the Courthouse Plaza case, there are some new private streets, but that project didn't move ahead anyway, so I think there's time to work this out, and if needed, we can amend the bylaws to be very clear in what our scope is. But other than that, there was nothing else from my standpoint. Sluckert.

Kirsten LockhartFeel free to completely shut down this line of questioning, but would this be an opportunity to include some sort of instruction about make recommendations with regards to parcel-specific recommendations?

NaptystaffIt depends how we want to reference it. So I don't know if the bylaws are the appropriate place for that because the partial specific recommendations have their own process, identify the comprehensive plan that follows other processes that the Planning Commission uses to review projects which are stated in the bylaws. You know, I would see basically the partial specific recommendations as a piece of the comprehensive plan. and this already says that the Planning Commission shall review the comprehensive plan. If we wanted to add more detail, we could consider. But is there something specific you're thinking of of how you want it to be addressed?

Kirsten LockhartWell, I mean, we sort of left it open-ended of whether we had a process to designate a parcel as eligible outside what's currently written into the comp plan. Okay. So do we have – is this a place that we could include an entry gate and shall make recommendations with regards to the designation of an eligible parcel?

NaptystaffMy preference, we could certainly add something like that in here. My preference would be that we have a separate discussion on what that process looks like. We can review the bylaws anytime. It doesn't have to be only in these two-year cycles. So if we have a separate discussion and decide for the purpose of parcel-specific recommendations, Planning Commission initiates and makes a recommendation and so on, once we have that, then I think it would be more appropriate to get it into the bylaws once it's been identified.

Kirsten Lockhartappropriate in city code. By-laws might not have been the right place to start, but I just wondered if it was worth including as a responsibility, if we want to claim that responsibility for ourselves.

NaptystaffYeah.

James FeatherYeah, to make it very clear, because there was some uncertainty as to whether an applicant could seek a change to the comprehensive plan to include a parcel that we had not identified. It's probably worth maybe taking one more step further on that. Other thoughts on that mr. Rice

Matthew Riceso the bylaws do leave a latitude for Us to have some responsibility designated by City Council, so if the City Council or mayor thought it was a good idea for us to To start doing this they just need to tell us and The bylaws make it clear that if it's in accordance with applicable law We're not violating any state laws by doing so we can do it

James FeatherSo at this point, we may take that as a follow-up, but not make a change currently. Is that the consensus? Okay. I

Paul Cunninghamhave a question on your previous point in looking at our review of private streets. I would take it back a couple of Planning Commission chairs, which is going to take it back a number of years, chose to remove the Planning Commission from the review of major redevelopment issues if there was not a major zoning change involved or some other things like that. I believe the Planning Commission at that time and has ever since had an open request to the City Council to be included on those kinds of reviews. The two projects that were just talked about with private streets, Courthouse Plaza and another where private streets were included in developments that the Planning Commission was not going to look at.

I think would be included if we were looking at all of the major changes and redevelopments that that request had made. So when we talk about just private streets, I think you're also opening the issue again. of us looking at major redevelopments such as courthouse plaza rather than doing them in isolation. And I believe the Davies property fell into portions of that reconsideration at times when we're dealing with substandard streets and other things in developments. So that I think the planning commission's ability to look at those kind of developments is important. and being excluded from that process has unintended consequences as was just discussed. So I think addressing both of those issues might give us some clarity

in looking at all the major redevelopments that go on in the city to help us better perform our role in looking at what those things are. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

James FeatherGood topics for follow-up. No changes we'd like to propose for this evening now. There's no other discussion. Is there a motion to address the bylaws in our annual review?

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that the Planning Commission adopt the Planning Commission bylaws as provided in Attachment 1 of the Staff Memorandum dated 12 January 2026.

Tassos McCarthyIs there a second? I second the motion.

James FeatherIt moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion on the motion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Thank you. Next order of business is the required annual review of our remote participation policy. Mr. Napty, would you like to comment?

NaptystaffYes, this is a relatively new ask of the Planning Commission. There are changes made in the State Code in 2024 that required that all boards and commissions review and adopt new remote participation policies every year as long as they are going to continue to operate with the assumption that remote participation is allowed and conform to a state code. So last year, 2025, was the first time that you had done this. You had previously adopted your remote participation policy but hadn't had to review it before. There were a couple changes last year based on those changes to the state code that happened in 2024. There were no changes to the state code this last year, and those are really the types of things that would trigger a change

to a remote participation policy. There are a lot of rules we have to follow, so we don't recommend that we make any changes to this with the risk of not being in conformance with state code. However, this is here for your review. If there's anything that you would like to consider for changing, you're welcome to do that now. Otherwise, the state code requires that you take action whether you change it or not and approve the remote participation policy for the to the Planning Commission for discussion.

James FeatherThank you. Any questions or comments for staff or proposed changes to the policy? Okay. Ms. Lager?

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that the Planning Commission adopt the Planning Commission remote participation policy as provided in attachment one of the staff memorandum dated 12 January 2026. Second.

James FeatherIt's been moved and seconded to adopt the policy as provided. Any further discussion? All those in favor, say aye, please. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. All right. Next door of business, public hearings. We have none this evening, so we will recess our regular meeting and go into our work session, which is our continued discussion on the proposed fiscal year 2027 to 2031 capital improvement program. Mr. Napty.

NaptystaffThank you again, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. process has been underway since November when you received a presentation from the acting city manager on the draft capital improvement program at that time. You since held several discussions to begin to develop recommendations to be presented to city council, the last one being on December 8th. So for today, we will continue that discussion with the goal of drafting some or preparing some draft recommendations to be ready for a public hearing at your next meeting, January 26th, which is already scheduled. We will then ask planning commissioners to come to the city council work session on February 3rd to present your recommendations. So the goal for

today, again, is to get these to the point where we have draft recommendations. They don't have to be worded perfectly. We can continue to work on them. In the past, staff has taken your chair to refine them and then emailed them out for any further changes, but have always been ready with the final recommendations before the public hearing. So that's what we would do today. We have at the request of the Planning Commission representatives from the Fire Department and Parks and Recreation here as well. So if you have questions for them, feel free to ask some of them. I will quickly go through a reminder of the Planning Commission's role and also remind you of some of the major topics that came up at the December 8th meeting because we started to get

into what we thought some of the recommendations might be at that time. A reminder of the commission's role as defined in the city code is to determine conformance of the capital improvement program with the comprehensive plan as you are the overseers of the comprehensive plan. This can be done on a number of levels. One is to determine conformance of individual projects with the comprehensive plan and we've already talked about how those are identified in the capital improvement program a second way is to advise council on city priorities among proposed projects City Council is always in the position of having to choose which projects to recommend to be supported in conformance with the proposed capital improvement program and

the Planning Commission can help them with that by helping prioritize projects based on how important they are in the comprehensive plan. And then lastly, to anticipate future considerations. This is kind of the inverse of the first recommendation, is to make sure that projects that are in the capital improvement program are being planned for and not being omitted. A summary of your conversation on December 8th, we included a summary of the comments that we heard in your staff report, and those were broken up into three categories. The first is general capital comments. Commission typically provides to City Council are general comments to help them prioritize rather than focusing on specific projects. They identify what priority should be, what is most important in

the comprehensive plan, and those types of things. And we'll show you some examples. Second is project specific comments. These are comments where planning commissioners mentioned a specific project, whether it should be supported or had questions about it. And lastly, there were general financial comments. These are comments that really discussed things such as the city's financial standing and financial planning over the long term and those types of things. Not the type of comments that we recommend to be included in the Planning Commission recommendations, but we included them in your staff report as a reference because they could help you determine what your recommendations will be and help prioritize projects.

And just to show how this breaks down, this is color-coded. This is a summary, of the recommendations that you provided city council last year not the exact wording the exact wording is in your staff report but this these these were summarized into bullet points and the color coding here shows the type of recommendation that was provided and you can see that all the blues are the general capital recommendations this is where the planning commission provided a general statement to help guide city council in their decision making and then the orange ones were specific projects. And you can see last year we only had one specific project that was mentioned in the Planning Commission's comments. So to start off, the general financial comments,

these are the ones that we don't recommend you provide as formal recommendations but are here for guidance. Some things we heard December 8th is that the city has a competitive tax rate and there is value in living in the city. Second, that rating criteria from bond rating agencies focuses on ongoing costs over capital investment. This was in relation to concerns that were raised about how the capital improvement program could infect our bond ratings. And then lastly, that many current financial obligations are a result of deferred improvements. This was a result of a comment we heard at a previous work session asking about the significant increase in the overall amount of the capital improvement program

around 10 years ago. And the response we heard from the chief financial officer said there were a lot of projects that had to come about now because they had not been started earlier. The second group of comments, general capital comments, these are the more the general comments that are intended to help guide council rather than to focus on a specific project. Some of the things we heard December 8th were to support external funding and seek new opportunities. You may recall we had a similar comment to this with the resolution that went to City Council last year. Another comment to leverage city-owned properties to offset costs for other projects. So to use city-owned properties as a way to increase revenues or to provide

opportunities for facilities to be located. There's a general comment to invest in what makes people want to live here. And there was a comment to consider long-term changes when prioritizing short-term partial improvements. The example that was provided with this comment was the fielding station at the property yard, recognizing that the property yard has a larger feasibility study and will likely be relocated in the future. So the question was, how can we think about this investment, particularly the fielding station, so that we aren't investing too much into it, knowing that it's going to likely move or

Matthew Ricebe relocated at some point in the future.

Naptystaffand then lastly project specific comments these are the comments that address a specific project in the CIP the first one we had a couple comments questions about the timing for the Van Dyke master plan implementation we we had comments about this project as we mentioned last year the comment last year was that the Van Dyke park improvements are specifically identified in the comprehensive plan and the Planning Commission continued to support that but based on the other priorities that are developing in the CIP this was one that the Planning Commission felt could have been deferred and that was deferred in the CIP but it's now coming up again with

Matthew Ricerecommended funding this year

Naptystafftiming for the property are redevelopment on how urgent it is we heard comments about questioning whether this could be delayed we also heard comments saying that delaying it would increase costs

Matthew Riceby deferring maintenance.

NaptystaffWe had comments to suggest that we look for alternative funding for school facility improvements. This is, I believe was based on the hope that there would be changes to the state code that allow us to leverage additional resources to fund school facilities. General comments to support stormwater and wastewater projects. There are questions about the timing and scale of the fire station 3 replacement project. There was general support for the West Drive property acquisition project with a statement that these types of opportunities don't come along very often and are limited so we can take advantage of it while we can. There were comments multiple commissioners supported continued investment in the Willard-Sherberg

Community Center and a planning commissioner may recall there was a general comment last year about continuing investment in projects that we have already taken so far. And then there are general questions about the cost and need for some of the turf conversion projects that are identified in the CIP. So that's where we are now. I just want to remind you about where we left things off. As I mentioned, we would like to get to the point where we can start preparing some draft language. And I have some slides here. We can start doing that. You can see as we type things in. As I mentioned, we don't have to have everything ironed out tonight. We just want to get some general language, and we can continue to tweak that over the next couple of days.

But before we get into doing that, I'd ask that we start with questions, especially recognizing that we have our guests here, Stacey Summerfield from Parks and Recreation and Sean Dunstan from the Fire Department. If you have questions for them, then we should get through those first before we start trying to develop language. So that's all we have for the staff report today.

James FeatherThank you, Mr. Napty. Questions from the dais?

Matthew RiceMr. Rice. so I'd like to ask a question to both of our guests in the audience um if we could start with parks that would be helpful we talked about a variety of issues my role as the liaison to PRAB means that I attempt to provide summaries of projects and the importance of the projects more helpful if they heard it again from a more qualified person to make the statements. So a few things. I'd like to hear about the connection between the Van Dyke master plan, which is something that we've supported strongly, and the Willard Sherwood, and how those two things are connected and any sequencing that would happen between the two projects and any dependencies between the two.

James FeatherAnd I might add the Blandon Boulevard master plan as well. There's some integration there.

Stacy SummerfieldstaffYes. First of all, thank you for having me. I'm Stacy Summerfield. I'm the parks director. And, yes, so you'll notice in the CIP, we have the Van Dyke master plan has been pushed back a little. was because of the desire to complete the design and to kind of know the final look of the Willard Sherwood project. One of the things that I know you're all aware of, but the Willard Sherwood building includes the senior center moving to that location. And so we have quite a vibrant senior population, about 1,500 members. Right now we're gaining about 40 members a month. And so if we move to that location, they're moving away from Green Acres, outdated building but green acres also has pickleball on site bocce on site outdoors and so

it does move where we would be looking at for the van dyke remodel it would change the population that's using that a bit and so thinking about the ways that that connects that building to the park additionally there's four children's classrooms on the first floor for youth programming and so how we connect that that building over to Van Dyke because there is a connected outdoor playground but it's not an outdoor space like Van Dyke to take kids over to you know a more natural playscape and so that has been the impetus behind us moving the Van Dyke master plan out is so that we know really what the site adjacent to Van Dyke will look like as well as the traffic patterns of that of course it's going to be bringing a lot more people to that site and how traffic flows

was a master plan our master planning process was started in 2018 for Van Dyke and in that in that design it did move the parking lot out of the center of the park and slide it over towards Sherwood so now that we know what the parking and traffic movement through the site will look like with the Willard Sherwood building that'll help us consider the parking for for Van Dyke as well and then we have also been working hand-in-hand with the Blenheim Boulevard project currently looking at how we can make sure our signage matches up there's a complete signage plan that's developed for that pedestrian signage letting people know where amenities are along Blenheim and then matching that up with we also have a signage project rolling out in the parks that's updating park

signage to be more inclusive of multiple languages visual impairments and so making sure that those two match up one of the other big pieces that came out of the 2018 master planning process which ended because of covid so we would look at kind of the the community feedback we got there but then we would engage in a full new master planning process for the park because of course 2018 was before pickleball became a thing and now it is a huge thing for our community members so we would be restarting the the master planning process but that master plan showed more of a pedestrian connection to Van Dyke Park so instead of utilizing kind of the central entrance there the way it is now for mostly cars limited sidewalks it would be more interconnected with the Blenheim

Boulevard project so that pedestrian connection for us is also a big piece

Matthew Ricegoing back even further we we've heard over the last decade plans for Leighton just talked about courthouse plaza and so the idea was a central walkable corridor that would take people from the center of town Old Town Square courthouse plaza and be able to have them walk or travel directly up through the center of that block into Van Dyke Park and to St. Leo's and to everything beyond so I appreciate your comments expertly delivered and concise much than I ever have done as the representative but importantly the connection between willow Sherwood and the park is substantial the senior center and most of their recreational activities may take place in Van Dyke and there's been years of discussion about this we have known for over a

decade that Green Acres is not is not able to be renovated to serve a useful as a city facility without hundreds a million I don't even know the right numbers they're atmospheric but in order to bring the building up to standards it's just not not conceivable and so I appreciate you discussing the connection we've already spent millions of dollars the county has outlaid huge amounts of money already on this project and I very very much want both of these things the Van Dyke master plan and the Willard Sherwood Center to continue I think it's difficult imagining the amount of time and effort invested by Ms. Sommerfeld and her predecessors and and then just doing a u-turn on the willard sherwood and by extension requiring a complete rethink of van

dyke park so we lose a whole lot more than just our relationship and money with the county we lose the progress in a united vision of what van dyke park will be in the future so um thank you very much i don't have any other questions maybe my colleagues do Others for

James Featherparks. Mr. Gunnigan.

Paul CunninghamThank you, Ms. Summerfield. As a user of the senior center of Green Acres, I believe it may be some time before I transition to my new place of recreation. And as such, I am hopeful that we keep Green Acres up at least in a usable condition until I can get to that stage. in my time frame. A comment I would make when it comes to this process, because having watched it for a long time, I think it's been an excellent process. Sometime before 2018, the Planning Commission spent three years in a row trying to encourage the City Council to actually adopt a master plan for van dyke park and the city council was reluctant uh since the adoption ultimately of a master plan we've gone through a number of iterations and not only for van dyke

park but it seems that master planning has become the activity du jour to get anything accomplished in the city if we're going to do it we set out with a master plan for what we're going to do so we now complete a significant number of master plans and I don't know that we have a review process to find out how many of them get completed and end up on the shelf because they were a good thought process but they're never integrated and adopted, and how many actually are implemented in the form in which they're developed and adopted because of the time legs between doing master plans and moving forward. From that standpoint, I would ask, is there a way we can look at the master planning process now, such as Van Dyck,

and find a streamlined way to make it efficient to continue working and including the modifications to get to the goal of doing some of this. Because hopefully, or ideally, I guess, we would get a master plan and we would go out and we would implement it. And I think our experience, especially with the Van Dyke master plan, says that we have kept the issue alive and well, but we have had to deal with a lot of change as we moved along this process and we're not done yet

Stacy Summerfieldstaffi think there are two things that can really help us one i appreciate the way the van dyke cip is laid out in the in that there is master planning funding built into the process as well as implementation funding i think i have a number of or the parker's department has a number of master plans that the planning is funded, but then the actual implementation of the park is not. And so I agree with you. I think sometimes it happens where we come up with a great plan, but then it's never implemented mostly due to money. The reason I came in late tonight is that we are in the process of building a parks foundation. So I was over at that meeting. And I think that is something that can, it was a big topic of discussion tonight because

we, of course, are finishing the redevelopment of Theis Park. So talking about how we can leverage private dollars through naming rights and a number of different avenues in order to help offset the cost of implementing some of these master plans. We also have a funded master plan to look at the Westmore School site. Of course, there's no funding for implementation afterwards, but I think ideally we can build a robust parks foundation that would help us leverage private dollars so that we can come in looking at a realistic kind of cost share between the city and the Parks Foundation, being able to offset some of those costs.

Paul CunninghamOkay. And I would commend you on pursuing that. I know when Sherwood was constructed, it was done on a gift from the estate of the Sherwood family. It covered a specific amount, $5 million worth of construction. and then there was still a needed input to the building to make other things. So we have a number of tiles out in the Sherwood entryway indicating that people had made contributions to that and they were recognized in that way. So I think that may follow on with what you are trying to do with Ty East Park and other things. In looking at Ty East Park as it's coming along, we're taking some old ball fields a first-class recreational facility when we're done so i think it meets our goal when we implement

master plans to take existing facilities and give us something that is excellent that the community will honor will use and will use for a very long period of time because they will be functional for a long period of time and pay back that investment in in the utility and benefit I think if there were other ways, and I'll commend you on getting a foundation which will help move some of this along, because moving costs out of the budget and out of some of this in order to maintain control of tax rates while still making progress, I know is a value and a goal of the city at this time. I think that's probably what I have to say because I know that the progress is slow. I don't know that it ties into any existing project with parks and rec at the moment.

But I think your input and continued input on what's functional master planning and what's not will be useful as we move forward. Thank you.

James FeatherOther questions? One of the other topics that had come up in our discussion at our last meeting, which was last December, was also about the Catherine Johnson Middle School fields. Would you like to comment on that project as well? That's a fairly substantial project that's coming up as well. I know there's a turf field replacement at the high school as well, which I don't think involves parks so much.

Stacy Summerfieldstaffout of our budget and into the schools which I appreciate but it comes out the city regardless yeah that's that's replacement for an aging turf but over at KJ we do have a potential design we worked with the middle school staff there quite closely looking at their needs from the parks and rec city perspective there is a lot of demand for turf field access largely because natural turf requires time in order to be playing playable following rain events and in different weather conditions and so the design for KJ includes it's a it's a it's in the space in between Kuttner Park and Catherine Johnson so it is a space that the Parks Department maintains our field manager Rich Wyatt is the person who books those spaces along in conjunction with the

school when we met with the KJ staff they are launching middle school sports so what they require is they have a cross-country program that needs to be able to practice within the confines of the school they cannot leave the school grounds and then a track and field program so their biggest asks were if they could redo the track that is closest to oh yeah we're looking at the overhead here closest to the school there is an existing gravel track that's defined it's not a standard size so they have to run I think like three and three quarters lap they don't start and end in the same place so they were interested in getting a standard size track the other ask from facility or from faculty members at the school was to have a paved area

in the center of the track that could be used to play again pickleball a number of different sports that require a hard court surface that they would play outdoors and then a perimeter walking track the city the walking tracks are one of the most highly used pieces of assets in the in the neighborhoods because people like to come over and walk a defined amount to figure out how long they've walked so the site design features two lit turf fields a perimeter walking track that is hard pack gravel a rubberized track surface and a paved area in the middle of the track the site has some significant challenges because it the fill at the site is largely made up out of the old linear the whole linear school when it was torn down went in there so

we will often have bricks come up to the surface we've had a toilet come up before that our staff went out and dug up so there are some challenges with the actual site with the fill and then there are a lot of stormwater challenges because unclear and when you look at it from above but there's a pretty significant The site of the Katherine Johnson school down into the field and so it tends to be a very wet area that water accumulates So looking at how we can move storm water off the site store storm water and heavy rain events the other thing that's included in the estimate for the site is the creation of permanent restroom facilities at Kuttner Park and then Looking at different ways to add additional parking. There's a pretty difficult parking shortage when there's a lot of

games happening down there. And then working with transportation, there is a long-term plan to move the light at Germantown so that the exit for Kuttner matches up with that light down there. So when that space is created, how can we utilize that for parking and drop-off? So it is a large plan. The estimate was $10 million, so it's quite expensive. and unfortunately a lot of that money goes into site work to resolve the fill and stormwater problems but for the 10 million it does provide all the assets requested by the middle school and by the community

James Featherand the current condition of the facility how disruptive has it been to programs for the schools the parks it

Stacy Summerfieldstaffis difficult it is unfortunate when it's raining They cannot utilize that field. It becomes quite wet. In fact, we went out there to meet with our turf specialists after it rained quite heavily, and there's about two to three inches of standing water on the field. It takes quite a while to dissipate. And so the middle school, along with wanting the additional assets for the middle school sports, would also like to have a reliable field to utilize for PE classes as well as school middle school sports would include soccer so we're looking at lining for soccer field hockey and then you can see the original proposal also included baseball diamond to be utilized for softball and baseball

Matthew Ricequestions mr. rice yeah the grade change on the Katherine Johnson site and the issue you mentioned creates a really difficult accessibility issue so the stairs don't have a significant landing space and once you are off the concrete it's just mushy grass and because I do professional work in accessibility in my other job I frequently get pictures of the site when it's waterlogged and you know grandparents with their walkers or students in wheelchairs is just it's not a place that's inviting it's real difficult getting from the other side is a little easier getting from the school is not simple at all so it's complex I admire you endlessly I tell everybody Stacey has one of the most complex jobs in the city just the sheer number of projects and

the budgets and the personnel that's um rectifying problems that you know are from three decades ago yeah these these are unfortunate things but you've captured the complexity of this one there was a reaction right away a turf field well that should be a million you know why is this 10 minute yeah this is really a 10 million dollar project it's complicated so thank you for your explanation I appreciate it

Stacy Summerfieldstaffyeah no thank you we did work hard on this one to also it is only two youth sides fields that I should point that out there not full-size soccer fields because we work to maintain that wooded barrier and not cut into the trees and then the gravel pathway on the outside we looked at different materials that could be used like the hexagonal tiles that the gravel goes in so that we're not compressing the dirt for the roots for that tree line and the goal of removing as few trees as possible so

Kirsten Lockhartthis isn't project specific but just to our note about messaging you know when we go back with our comments I was at a facility in Stafford this Olympic sized pool and maybe a dozen turf fields and negligible indoor gym space. Really, those are the two marquee facilities. And it brings in most recently $12 million a year in revenue. So just emphasizing that these parks projects are revenue generating projects. They're for the benefit of the city, but they also do pay for themselves back relatively quickly in terms of usage, especially in such a sports crazy area. So, you know, making sure that our comments sort of emphasize that, you know, we understand these are expensive. however you know asterisks next to the ones that will pay themselves back

Tassos McCarthyyeah i have one question um i've actually gone for quite a few walks in the path around there and there's some like wetland areas have you guys considered like you know i imagine those two to three inches of pooling water have to be moved somewhere has that been looked at and is that addressed in that number?

Stacy SummerfieldstaffSo there are vernal pools within the wooded area in Kuttner Park. In fact, some of them are specifically created to manage some of the stormwater on the site. Looking at the amount, the volume of water that's coming down into that area, it can't fully be managed by the wetland area in the trees, but we've looked at, you know, how to move it off the site or how to store it on the site in such a way that it doesn't overwhelm low-lying area does like it like it does right now

Paul Cunninghammr. Cunningham thank you I know parks and rec also borders on the city's trails and I know some of the trails are very controversial at this point and I know others are under discussion for how they are going to be completed where do trails stand in terms VIP for the ones not on the hottest burner in terms of the George Schneider Trail for the rest of the city.

Stacy SummerfieldstaffWell, we're very lucky to have a great working relationship with transportation. And so currently the model is that transportation utilizing a lot of grant dollars builds the trails and then city parks and recreation maintains them. So really our funding currently goes towards maintaining the trail assets that we have doing a number of things there, and the CIP funds to build the new trails are coming out of transportation.

Paul CunninghamOkay.

Stacy SummerfieldstaffYeah.

Paul CunninghamAnd do we have any issue with building? I know when we talk bridges on trails in the city, when I see the bridges that are proposed for the George Snyder Trail, they do not seem to be in the same cost realm with the city's bridges for the rest of the city. I know the city's bridges are supposed to be motorcycle capable of handling a police motorcycle so that they are accessible, which means they're structured to hold reasonable weight, but they're not in the same league with the industrial strength trail bridges that we're otherwise talking about. So are we compatible with our bridges? I know they've been built a number of years ago and we're coming along. Is that something that's an issue we should be looking at here?

Stacy SummerfieldstaffTwo things. I think first we are working for parks to look at an asset management system where we can put, we are reaching points where our assets are aging out. And you'll see in our CIP we have funds dedicated towards the park space lift project, playground replacement, and so those asset replacements. But I think having a larger asset management program is something that we're invested in seeing come online. hopefully within the next year or two. And then with the bridges, the cost is much higher than it used to be, for sure. And I do think we are now, you know, what passed in the past is no longer workable now because we are looking at ways to get, for us, we have a small bobcat which takes materials out.

You know, it's easier than carting in loads of gravel by hand. And so to be able to have bridges that can support those sorts of small machinery items for parks makes the work much more efficient for us. So I think you do see more robust bridges in the replacement. But we also look at different opportunities. We have a replacement project right now on the judicial trail where we're taking an older bridge that's reached the end of its life and replacing it with a large culvert and just bringing the whole trail over it because it's a very short span. And so being able to look at different options. And then, you know, really thinking about accessibility and so making sure that the option that we're putting in is as accessible as possible.

Paul CunninghamThank you.

James FeatherOkay. parks. Ms. Somerville, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule and being with us this evening. It's been very helpful filling some of our knowledge gaps.

Stacy SummerfieldstaffIf you have any questions, no problem if I need to come back. So thank you so much.

James FeatherThank you very much.

Stacy SummerfieldstaffThank you.

James FeatherNext. Thank you. Please. Thank you.

Kirsten LockhartGood evening. Thank you for joining us. Good evening. Would you mind giving us just a quick sort of overview of where the department is in the planning for the Station 33 replacement? Station 33, yeah. Station 33 replaced

Tassos McCarthya couple years ago.

Kirsten LockhartYeah, sorry. Station 3, the one closest to my house.

Speaker 8Yeah, sure. First, this is my, in almost 24 years, this is my first planning commission meeting, so I'm excited to be here and meet you guys and see you guys, so thank you for that. Chief O'Neill sends his regards. He's in Colorado and cold, snowy Colorado. He's been the point man for this project with directly working with our project manager. But I'm going to do my best to fill in for him, and I may have to get you some answers, get some answers back to you. But the feasibility study was in 2022, which I shared with Mr. Napty earlier. is I don't believe you guys we've shared the feasibility study report of Station 3 so you can see the aging mechanical the plumbing etc may be valuable for you

guys to see and answer some of your questions about the current condition of Station 3 and that was almost four years ago now so where we're at currently is we've completed the conceptual design and and there was a question at one point whether our fire marshals were going to move over or not. So we've gone back and forth on that, and depending who the city manager is, Chief O'Neill's been working with the city manager to kind of iron that out. But essentially our conceptual design is complete. So now I believe the council has directed Chief O'Neill and procurement to work for PPEA and get some information to see if there's any interest in that.

Kirsten LockhartWas there a requirements document that was developed that informed that design? Yes. Like

Speaker 8a

Kirsten Lockhartcon-ops kind

Speaker 8of? Yes. So that was part of the feasibility study, which then led us to purchasing or the city to purchasing the GMU foundation building next to us. We purchased that. And then as that was ongoing, we were continuing to work on the conceptual design. So, yes, all of that was done, but that was part of the feasibility study, which I can share all that information with you.

Kirsten LockhartOkay. obviously we're also talking about the property yard which hosts some emergency management functions that are going to need to be relocated somewhere so you know is there blank space or swing space that maybe some of those can be rolled into the fire station or has that not been put on the table that

Speaker 8was not presented i i know that was not presented but i think any of that could could definitely be looked at i know there are some limitations which i may lean on mr napty for this but there's some limitation on height so we were already maxed out on height but additional be some availability for that.

Kirsten LockhartOkay. And then my other question is, I've learned recently that there may be some changes to the city's fire station demand signal based on the county actions, namely that three is now the primary station responding to Woodley Chase in addition to George Mason.

Speaker 8That is correct. Yeah.

Kirsten LockhartSo do we ever qualify for any sort of like co-investment from the county when the bulk of the calls are going to be going to county assets?

Speaker 8That's something we look at on a regular basis, on a monthly basis, and then quarterly basis, uh how many calls the the county's answering for us in the city how many calls we're answering for them so so we look at that and evaluate that and uh while there has been increased demand on on some units going to woodley chase there's also additional units from fairfax county coming in to the city

Kirsten Lockhartokay yeah i know it's all covered under mutual aid but i heard the reason for woodley chase is part of location but also partially because the closest responding county station doesn't have a tower unit?

Speaker 8No. That we do? No, that's not true. It all goes by mileage.

Speaker 4Okay.

Speaker 8Mileage and, or I'm sorry, mileage and speed limit is factored into there. So they use GIS and look at it that way.

Kirsten LockhartYeah. It just struck me as those are sort of two different demand signal changes, maybe from the last time that a study was done. And is it incorporated in the plans?

Speaker 8It is, yeah. Okay. We built in capacity for that in the conceptual design.

James FeatherThank you. Others? Mr.

Matthew RiceRice. Yeah, I've talked to Chief O'Neill a few times about this. I think it would be quite helpful to articulate this sequencing of a rebuild of Station 3. it it's not true that you can operate out of trailers or out of temporary space this would be a very uniquely defined sequence of events we cannot afford to not have station three 100 operational so can you articulate uh the sequence of commerce building uh station three build of a new building and then the sequence i found it interesting actually to learn this myself because i naively thought oh we'll do the build of a new building at the same time we're tearing down anyway if you could handle that i'd appreciate it

Speaker 8yeah i think i can answer that uh the the plan well initially when we were doing the feasibility study uh the feedback we got from bkv our our architect was that at that time which was four years ago it would be at least two million dollars to go to an alternate site if we were to build at our same location so that essentially took that off the table there was really no locations for that which led to us the city purchasing the the foundation building next to us and as part of that was we would remain in our current fire station until the new one was built which which depending on the design the actual architectural design how far it would encroach on our current property but but we would stay in our

building essentially our current current fire station until the new one was built and then we would just transition over so

Matthew Riceethically if if code or if an emergency operations functionality or some other things from the property are needed to be relocated possibly that could be slotted in after an operational transfer to a new building and then take down of the old building and then there would be an open parcel of some sort or perhaps a means of getting some functionality from the property yard or from fire marshal or code into some additional space

Speaker 8I think that's a potential. I would lean on Chief O'Neill and our architect, but I believe there is ability in the new building to have some office space.

Paul CunninghamOthers? Mr.

James FeatherCunningham.

Paul CunninghamIs there anything additionally, if you're building the new building on the George Mason Foundation site, how much of the existing site is going to be included in the new fire station?

Speaker 8I don't know exactly how much because I think there's some special exceptions and exemptions and things that would have to go through that process. But I believe there would be some, but it would be minimal. But to tell you exactly right now, I wouldn't be comfortable doing that.

Paul CunninghamIn other words, it would be minimal and it would be adjacent to the new structure? Yes. So that, as alluded to, a good bit of that site could remain open?

Speaker 8Correct.

Paul Cunninghamand with working with with the fire department continue to control that site or could it be used then for additional construction next to it either to expand in the future fire station three if you needed more capacity or used to repurpose for other things within the city such as a property yard function or something else

Speaker 8i think that is something that that they're looking at and working on right now is as part of that public private private partnership so so i think it is possible but i think that's something that they're looking into and trying to get ideas and feedback on

Paul Cunninghamokay and that that is left open outside the funding of of the project as it's moving forward and the phasing of it to get to completion and and there would be no other alternate operating site i gather while this goes on as i've heard it discussed correct

Speaker 8yes

Paul Cunninghamso we

Speaker 8would remain in place

Paul Cunninghamyou would be remaining in place until you move next door in which case you've got excess space correct along that line okay i think yeah

Matthew Ricethe commerce site looks like it's about 30 percent larger the parcel right 30 bigger

Paul Cunninghamthat and i guess my question and understanding all of this is going to the commerce site and if we get everything we need plus distance plus elevation for additional functionality and your opening space is that is that such as the school system being reserved for future to fire department requirements or you know as their green acre site is reserved for the school system if we needed another school site it's there for their use would this remain for the fire department's use or is this something that could be considered for repurposing to other uses when this process is complete.

Speaker 8I think that's feasible, and I think that's something that the fire chief and procurement have recently met on as part of that public-private partnership to get ideas how it could be repurposed.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Thank you.

Tassos McCarthyThank you. Yeah, I'd personally love to see that feasibility study. I don't speak for anyone else. The housing of the fire marshals, whether or not that happens, It sounds like a little bit of an unknown at this point still. Is the cost and current scope you have, does that accommodate either avenue? And then, moreover, are there any additional unforeseen items that might not be factored into that budget?

Speaker 8No to the unforeseen. I mean, I guess if it's unforeseen, we don't really know. But no, not that we're aware of currently. But I believe the budget was built with them moving over with the additional square footage. So I believe the budget covers it.

Matthew RiceThe dollar value that I saw most recently in the CIP was $53 or $55 million for this over a longer period of time. Mr. Nabte, is that at least in the ballpark? Yes. $57. Does that contain the same sort of cost escalations that are used in parks projects or Willard Sherwood?

Speaker 8From what I was told, yes.

Matthew RiceOkay.

Speaker 8I don't know. I haven't seen it myself, but I was told yes.

Matthew RiceOkay. I can't imagine anything that would be worse for the city than not having a fully functional Station 3. It serves just my naive view watching the engines coming down George Mason Boulevard within earshot. It serves essentially every call at George Mason I've seen other than active fires where there's multiple crews in there. It's all Station 3. For the region, not just for the city, but for the sake of the parts of the county that Ms. Lockhart referred to, is essential that we do this right and certainly something I think we should strongly support and that if we have additional questions or concerns or it may be hypothetical scenarios we get you know Chief O'Neill and grill him when he

gets back from Colorado and see what he has to say

Speaker 8yeah I think just just add is when I share the feasibility study with you guys you'll be able to see the failing the failing infrastructure the the mechanical systems that are over 40 years old now the plumbing the mechanical it's all in poor condition it's only getting worse or only have gotten worse since 2022 so but I'm excited to share that with you so you can see that

Matthew Riceokay not to repeat anything or go back at all because this is a good kind of place to sum things up the physical station at some point was owned by a volunteer fire department which is sort of administratively separate from the professional fire department can you articulate how that when the transfer happened and how the ownership structure of a future building might look like and whether it would involve the participation of the volunteers yeah

Speaker 8sure the so the original building was built in 1965 and it was renovated started in 95 completed in 96 the volunteers owned it at that time that they planned and executed and paid for the renovation and around 2016 is when the the city took responsibility for maintaining even though the volunteers still own the building and then just recently in the last year or so the volunteer fire department signed the over to the city in anticipation of them receiving the asset, moving into the new building eventually.

Speaker 4Mr.

James FeatherCuny.

Paul CunninghamWhen Station 33 was redeveloped, one of the discussion points we had was the increased functionality we're going to be able to bring trucks in the front, pull around the building, and drive through. My understanding is that that didn't turn out exactly the way it was planned, and so we now back in most of the time. Are there aspects of that that could apply to this particular project?

Speaker 8Yeah, so yes, 50-50 on the new fire station. We're on Fire Station 33. our ambulances can drive around and have the drive through bay. Our rescue engine cannot. Our larger fire apparatus cannot. That is something that I spent a lot of time on, making sure in the conceptual design we would not have those issues for a number of different reasons, but the number one factor just being safety. So we made sure all the apparatus would be able to turn and drive through.

Paul CunninghamIncluding the large ladder truck?

Speaker 8Yes, sir. Correct.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Thank

James Featheryou. And is there room for expansion if we go for larger apparatus, too, as we grow in the city?

Speaker 8There is. Yes, sir. There is. We did plan for 40 years out.

James FeatherOkay. Because we are seeing proposals for larger buildings in the city, whether it be approved or not. Another question. I did have a question about Fire Station 33. In Fire Station 3, we'll plan to use the existing facility until the new one is completed. How is 33 handled? because it was done on the same site, so you didn't have that same option.

Speaker 8Yes, good question. We were able to use our training center, which is located at the end of Clonial Avenue, which it worked coverage area based on surrounding Fairfax County companies and being able to get to the various areas of the city that 33 covered and an adequate adequate response time and that would not be the case for station 3 if we relocated out of there there would be some serious response challenges and gaps in coverage okay

James Featherand one of the discussion items or questions that came up in our prior meeting was how I forget exactly how it was put mr. Maybe you can refresh my memories, the discussion. But how are we seeing response times change over time as redevelopment occurs in the city with existing facilities and what benefits can we articulate for the improvements? I understand it's an old facility, but, you know, you can replace air conditioning units or whatever, but we're talking more about the public safety aspects of this as well.

Speaker 8Yeah, so general response times out of responding in the city have remained somewhat steady across time. What we really look at is what we call turnout time is getting out of the firehouse. You know, once the call is initiated, the tones alert us in the fire station and being able to get out. And as we build fire stations and as we did the conceptual design for station three, that was one of the number one priorities for us was making sure the majority of the living spaces were closest to the bays where the apparatus is so you can respond and turn out very quickly so the majority of the living area day-to-day living area is on the first floor and on and then the second floor would be the bunk rooms and the showers and the locker rooms and things like

that with fire poles so you can quickly access the bays and the current fire station and i don't know to visit and the current fire station there in the back of the building on the second floor so you have to if you're if you're in the bunk room if you're sleeping get up either go through a door pull go through the kitchen out into the bay or go down the stairs and through a couple doors so it's just it's not a I would say it's not up to the today's standards and expectations of being able to turn out rapidly but that that is something in the conceptional design that we paid a lot of attention to.

James FeatherAnd with additional growth in the city, I imagine there's potential for growth in the staff and the need for facilities to accommodate more people than today's facilities would allow. Yeah,

Speaker 8that is something we're continuing to evaluate, especially as it relates to our EMS units, because the number of people, whether it's residents, whether it's business owners, that we're paying attention to and the call volume that's increasing and really looking at the peak time. So that's Monday through Friday, 9 to 5-ish, 8 to 5-ish, and seeing if we need an increased capacity there. But as we were evaluating it for this budget cycle, we decided not to do that or propose that for this year, but it's something we're going to continue to look at potentially put on the table for next budget cycle.

James FeatherOkay, thank you.

Matthew RiceI'll start over here. Okay. I just want to just commend you and Chief O'Neill. You have a CFAI international accreditation. You have ISO class one ratings. And we talk a lot about the city's bond ratings, or at least maintaining that. And I think it's important to emphasize that part of the context behind investing in emergency services is our insurance costs for maintaining emergency services. And that's based partly on the impressive accreditation results a year and a half ago and the excellent ratings that you have. So we don't want to lose that. And we've been discussing a few, you know, what if sort of negative things, but the picture is very, very bright. Do you have any comment on the what if, you know, in terms of accreditation, the next one, which my understanding is 2029, 2030, if we don't replace Station 3, would it be a problem for the folks that come in and independently accreditate the department?

Speaker 8I think there's potential for that and not necessarily because of the building, but more so the health and safety factors that aren't built into Fire Station 3. And while some have been accommodated to the best we can, they're certainly not up to the standard now. and they certainly are far below where Fire Station 33 is health, safety, and wellness, building mechanisms that we put into place. And so I think that's where the accreditation piece, we may have challenges in the future with the fire station. While I know they were discussed as part of our last cycle last year when our team was in town evaluating us, it was discussed, with the recognition that we were working on a new building we had the

conceptual design so they left it out of the report so

Matthew RiceI know the structure risk part of that accreditation report looked at hypotheticals about increased building height and I know another thing in the city that we have which is a serious issue is the non ambulatory facilities where if there's a fire in a nursing home or in a jail it's a real extreme challenge getting people out safely quickly so investment in making sure we have a station that can respond really quickly to nursing homes the county's jail facility which we're closest to all of those things kind of play into this but i i would really not want to see us end up losing the kind of ratings that we we have by not investing properly. And it has been 35 years since it was renovated, 30 years at least, and we should support this as well.

Thank you.

James FeatherMr. Gunnigan.

Paul CunninghamThank you. Mine, I guess, is a little more specific, but it relates to other things that are going on in your neighborhood. I believe our transportation plan calls for 28 or 29, which is well within the 40-year window of the redevelopment of some of the road network. South Street, particularly going over into the county courthouse complex and things along that line. That's going to be right next to you and change some of the traffic patterns coming in and going out of the fire station. Is that something that has been looked at and considered for either improving times by not having to go through downtown if you could get around to go west? Or are there impacts that are being looked at with regard to the future construction of transportation arteries that go through this area?

Speaker 8I would say we're constantly evaluating all aspects of our response times and ways we can improve them. As far as the fire station and South Street, I know our traffic engineer and BKV has looked at that. We spent a lot of time looking at all the various options and kind of landed where we're landed at now based on feedback from them. As far as response times in the future and trying to find better ways, we're always trying to do that. And one of the things we've been able to do is preemption, which I don't know if you're familiar with that, but essentially it's GPS and changes the lights, which is huge for us.

Paul CunninghamOkay. And so this is being coordinated with the county then for the future on who and how we're going to get through so we can get equipment and other things that will work in going there. Yes, sir. When we talk about serving Woodley Chase and some of these other options that are outside the vicinity but in, the city's road structure is not particularly conducive to getting around efficiently, especially to areas like that. Are there any changes from a response standpoint that we should be looking at for future changes to the transportation network in the city You know, University Drive used to go through and provide one, and then George Mason Boulevard has changed somewhat the pattern to get to the university.

How you get through to Roberts Road or other places, are there things like that that, from a response standpoint, would make a significant difference as we look at this station being able to serve the area around that it's required to?

Speaker 8Yeah, I think we've implemented the majority of the things as of right now, preemption, things like that. I will say we work closely with the transportation and the project managers as they're doing road designs, they're doing trail designs. We have department members that sit on the various committees that provide feedback and guidance as it relates to emergency response. response. So I think as these designs come up, we're able to provide that feedback in real time. I'm not aware of any specific, unless we're going to put four lane highways everywhere, but I can't think

Paul Cunninghamof anything off

Speaker 8the top of my head.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Connecting some roads through to make it accessible would be what the thought in there for some of the roads in that area that might be given reasonable thought.

Speaker 8That is a good question. I'd have to put some additional thought into that. We're happy to do that and give you some input. That's

James Feathera good question.

Speaker 8Okay. Thank

James Featheryou. That's kind of looking ahead. We should be thinking about from Planning Commission bringing forward ideas that may not have been captured yet. So it's good to prompt a thought exercise.

Kirsten LockhartThat's actually a neat dovetail to my question, which is going to be for Mr. Navtee. forum to have these sort of cross-functional conversations about public facility development? I mean, absent kind of raising the flag in certain meetings, what's the right way to get people together talking about this stuff?

NaptystaffI don't think there is a formal forum. The effort that Chair Feather was talking about earlier is a level of service study that Eric Foreman is leading right now, and hopefully we'll have a work session with you all on that in February or March. But that is looking at city services and how we can go about offsetting that. Hopefully, once that effort is established, then there will be ongoing discussions on it. But to this date, we haven't had a central forum where all departments, all types of facilities are discussing things together. It's always been project-based. If there's a transportation project, they bring in everybody that needs to be coordinated for that. If we have a planning project, we bring everybody that needs to be coordinated for that.

there isn't anything that's just ongoing city oversight.

Kirsten LockhartOkay. I guess I'm just kind of hung up on problem solving for the property yard because that's multiple functions, types of vehicles, types of activity. And we have city investment projects that could take some or all of that, but we're not providing a forum for those discussions to happen.

NaptystaffWell, in that case, and I can't provide all the details of how that study has progressed. But with any of these, there is just after a feasibility study is done, the next step is usually figuring out where should we do what we need to do. And that was the case with Fire Station 3. You guys looked at alternative sites and ultimately landed on where they landed. And that was a part of the property yard study as well. And my understanding is that they had identified sites throughout the city where they could move some of the

Matthew Ricedifferent

Naptystafftypes of functions that are there, recognizing it might not all be in one place. criteria was. I'm assuming that this site did not turn up in that. My guess is they were looking at larger sites, but there may have been some discussions that could have said, well, if, you know, fire station three is moving next door, there'll be a little bit of empty land there. We could have some facilities there, and I know that's not going to be one of the recommendations that I'm aware of, and my guess is because of the size of the site, but that was a, there was a venue for that conversation to happen. It just focused on different criteria.

Kirsten LockhartI mean, that kind of goes back to the question then too of who has right of first refusal, right? If we're looking at two other unused or underutilized sites in the city, how do you get people in a room to start hashing that out?

NaptystaffI think honestly, that is a issue that happens rarely enough that no process has been developed. But so for example, the Barker house has a recent donation to the city. and that it kind of clarifies in the deed that it has to be used for parks for use just some things like that but what exactly we do with that there's been no conversation and i think partly that's because this is something that we did was so rarely that we didn't really know how to start it another one is one of the projects the cip is the west drive property i was

Kirsten Lockhartgoing to say west drive and then green acres

Naptystaffyeah um and so yeah to my knowledge there's no set process for that and it's good to know these opportunities are happening but again they have been the last time it happened whoever was involved is no longer here.

James FeatherAny other, Mr. McCarthy? Any other?

Tassos McCarthyYeah, I think that's a great point, and I just don't know if that's good enough. Like, is there a means for us to make some kind of recommendation to? Yeah. Okay.

NaptystaffI mean, yes, I think. And, you know, we had it from your conversation on December 8th.

Matthew Ricetwo in one of those. And when we start to

Naptystaffdevelop those, we can build upon that. But certainly, this is a venue where you can make those kind of recommendations.

James FeatherI think it's a very good conversation that we'll include in our remarks to Council. Anything else for Bayer? Thank you so much. Very informed, very helpful. It stimulated some really good discussion here, too. I think we've taken it a step up from some of our previous ones too but thank you all right thank you yeah yes come back back

Speaker 4you guys come back again

Naptystaffuh so before we get into uh actually drafting recommendations i want to see if there's any questions for me on any topics that were not covered tonight we can go through those and then we can start to come up with what our priorities are going to be

Kirsten Lockharti was looking at last year's recommendations and i felt like we pretty much are wanting to In your observer opinion, where did we miss the mark in how we expressed it, if we're now coming back and saying the same thing a year later?

NaptystaffWell, some of the issues, as we noted, were I think when the recommendations are kind of the bigger picture CIP-wide, as opposed to focusing on a specific project, even if council is reacting and listening and doing something about it, I feel like they're the kind of things that won't necessarily show up in a single year. some of those things are still priorities. The Van Dyke master plan was the only project-specific one, and the recommendation at the time was that planning commission is okay deferring this, and it was deferred. So now it's back and what do you want to say again? So I don't think that there's anything wrong happening with it. I would also say that, you know, we stay pretty high level with these.

When the planning commission actually presents the recommendations to city council, that's the opportunity to kind of dig in and explain and provide background in a much better way than you can do in a resolution. And I think that we should just make sure we're thinking about that, is make sure we take advantage of the opportunity the best that we can to really enforce it and make sure they understand it.

James FeatherYeah, and I think that's probably right because the discussions we've had here this evening, we made kind of some conclusions and can make very strong statements in support of some things. We know in the background there's pushback against some of these projects for some good reasons related to funding and financing and tax rate and all that. We need to be careful not to be too influenced by that perhaps, but stick to our guns and elevate things we think are most important. We can build on why we think that's the case, maybe make stronger statements as well. and I hope you all will be there at the work session, by the way, to chip in. But Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you. I guess in response to Ms. Lockhart's comment, my comment would be, did we miss the mark? When we look at the recharacterization of the council and the staff last year, this was the first time they had ever received a recommendation or a package from the Planning Commission because all of them were new they weren't here to have gone through this process before so I don't know that we missed the mark did we not understand our target audience and where they were intending to go might be another observation but our I don't know that our recommendations last year were far out of bounds. And my thought for this year, having watched the response last year, would probably be to strongly reiterate

that proceeding with things like the Senior Center and the Joint County Community Center should be proceeding and reiterate that kind of statement that I've heard during the past year. They still are capable of dealing with it as they will, but I think that kind of reinforcement says that what we're doing is longer term rather than this was this year's recommendation. Next year, we'll have a couple of hundred million dollars for you to go in a different direction. And we tap dance through this because most of this is not of the moment type of, boy, that was a great idea, we really ought to do that. Most of this is long-term planning and implementation that takes time to develop and execute and then look at the efficacy of it as you're moving down the road.

What have we done to improve the facilities in the city? And you go from projects that have been completed to projects that are to be completed and what is the impact going to be. So I'm not concerned that our recommendations are bad or should be redone for the audience that we're looking for. I'm looking at the recommendations we make to be solid in any environment, whether they can be implemented or how much of them can be implemented may be at issue. because of finances or other things along that line of pro-election. But I think the recommendations we make are typically solid recommendations that implement as much as you feel capable in terms of presenting them to the city council, not, boy, we should have gone a different direction to give you something that you wanted.

And that may be a challenge here, but I think from the discussion I've heard, from Mr. McCarthy, from Ms. Lockhart and the rest, that what we're looking at is talking about things that are germane to the city that are longer term, that are our function. Their function is to implement a budget this year with what they have to work with, do it next year, and then try to keep their jobs and get reelected to do it again. But that shouldn't be our focus on only giving them projects that are short term. Our focus should be on giving them projects that make the city a better place and let them work through the decision on selecting those projects that they feel will be the most bang for the buck at the given time.

James FeatherAnd as we're looking right in front of us here, consistent with comprehensive plan, I don't think I've heard anything today that suggests at least the key items we're talking about or not. Yes, there's a question of prioritization, funding, but there are realities about tax rates and so forth, but also deterioration of the facilities and services to the city. and as I think it was what Mr. Rice brought up at the previous meeting that Mr. Napty captured in the initial comments about what makes people want to live here and keep them here. And you'll be a part of this broader, vital area that we live in. There's a reason we don't want to get behind. We don't have to necessarily do everything at once,

but we have to be very mindful that at some point, heard a lot in the past is going to catch up to us, and we can't let it get too far away from us, even if there may be short-term pain. Those decisions are for the council, not us.

Kirsten LockhartWell, I feel like our comments, our feedback should inspire confidence in these projects, not open them up to criticism. And that's where I feel like maybe we fell down a little bit from last year to now, because some of these are still up for debate where we don't feel like they should be. So that's where I'm talking about. Do we need to strengthen our language? and you know what didn't hit the mark to to engender that confidence to move forward that we're still having the same conversation a year later

James FeatherI'd have to go back and think are there items that we discussed last year that have been stopped or are they just been deferred like Van Dyke that was moved Fire Station 3 has been on the table for a long time still conversations we had a great discussion tonight that could strengthen a recommendation for sure. GST, tomorrow night is your opportunity. Others?

Paul CunninghamI think that in city council's realm, they're dealing with the ongoing political environment. and if you're a person with children in the school system, your focus is what's happening in the next two years or three years in school and how will my children change. If you look at the ongoing greater political activity in the metro area, a great many people are saying, hey, I've lost my job. What's going on with the government? The stability of the playing field is changing rapidly. keep traction so that I can stay involved and succeed in this process. And some of what we're talking about here as a planning commission is looking at putting in the facilities for the capital improvement program that are going to transcend these

type of things. The ball fields at Tyus Park aren't dependent on what's happening in the school system in The building of a community center is not dependent on the fact we're going to have a community or not. It says we're going to upgrade the core facility for a large number of people in the city that they can use going forward. If it turns out to be unaffordable and is deferred for a year, that I don't think is our primary focus. I think our focus is saying that is a needed facility. So, from that standpoint, I don't know how much of the current climate we should be incorporating into this kind of recommendation. I think we should be getting back to the discussion we just had where we said, we've

got three or four properties in this city and we don't even have a process to deal with them when they give us tremendous opportunity. That's something we should be looking at to find and make better. That's something that we as a planning commission have the latitude to do without having to have 97 emails by tomorrow from constituents to tell us why we're doing this or why we're not doing this or how to do it better or anything else. We're not in the current thrashing environment to try to sort this out on an immediate basis. We've got the time and the intellect and the ability to look at it in a longer term process to make the best use of it and or at least recommend the best use of it. And whether that's adopted or not, maybe beyond our charter, but it doesn't mean we

shouldn't have a very strong input into it.

James Featherwhat we want to say

Matthew Ricemr. rice I think miss Lockhart and mr. Cunningham captured some important aspects of this I'm still stuck in the present so my view unfortunately is you know what happens if we do you turn on some of these projects and I'm I'm adding up the millions of dollars of investment that we lose I'm you know obviously George Snyder trail is one you know millions the cost of not moving the property yard it's actively flooding the cost in terms of insurance if we don't upgrade station 3 the lost confidence in our schools if we have a high school that has a leaking roof you know people will choose to live in the county our property values may start to decline relative to our neighbors and our 49% of our operating revenue from property taxes will start

to dip so sometimes it's hard to ignore the present political realities which you know are largely financial right now it's hard to pull out of that mode and to think in the general terms of the long-term view. So it's a challenge.

Paul CunninghamI agree with you that it's a challenge. But again, how much of it is our challenge and how much of it is the council's challenge and what's the difference between the two bodies and their purpose?

Matthew Ricewell they do have to make decisions based on budgets they accepted a tax rate that was eight cents below what the city manager recommended we've shot ourselves in the foot and we have problems right now funding long-term priorities that have been established by previous City Council's because of those financial issues it's real hard to separate it's not our job so I think your comments are well heated and I should think about that more extracting myself from that kind of worry about those things and then thinking long term because really it will conditions will change circumstances will be different in two years and five years and if we're constantly changing our trajectory you know we're going to be using up all our energy with that rather than you know setting a course that is

going to be steady and will be beneficial five years from now so anyway I don't think any of this is very helpful to us for me to spin my wheels and worry about it but I think it's I'm just expressing that it's hard to think of this as a long-term thing when there are direct pressing things related to these projects happening now that involve dollars and budgets and reputation and insurance insurability things like this so maybe I just need to write myself a note that's not your job, you know, don't worry about that.

Kirsten LockhartWell, I think it's also the difference between saying we agree these are all priorities, we can't fund all these priorities, how do we slip the schedule to make it work, and the talking points, which are more along the lines of this is actually not a priority, and I disagree with 10 years of work that's got us to that point. That's kind of what I meant about inspiring confidence. Maybe that's too gentle a word, but reminding people that there has been work and thought beyond the current reactionary sort of voices in the today against these projects.

Paul CunninghamAnd the playing field changes. As I alluded to earlier with Ms. Summerfield, there was a time when getting a master plan was like pulling teeth and worse than going to the dentist. And today, if we need a master plan, it is a small amount of funding, and so we put it at it whether we're going to use it or not because it gives us a talking point or an anchor on which we could move forward. But are we spending so much on these small master plans that are not going to go anyplace that we have lost focus of what is the core that we're trying to accomplish. And before we had none, now we have one for everything. And then we revise them and all of that goes into the cost consideration as times shift

on what we focus on. When we focus on schools a quarter century ago, we focused on what do we need to change? how many elementary schools do we need to keep a full county program going from four to two what do we need to do to renovate our schools going forward when as a company when as a planning commission we began to ask the question it's now five years ago and more to the planning to the school board what do we you know it's 25 years do we need to be doing anything i mean the county doesn't automatically renovate every one of its schools every 20 to 25 years. They've got too many. It's too expensive. They have a different way of approaching that. And our approach is that we're property managers.

We should look at it. Maybe we don't need to do it. If we do, perhaps we should look at exactly what we need to do and cost it, as opposed to coming up with a bulk of our cost and selling it and then trying to go out and figure out what we can do for that cost. the way we go about things has changed in certain ways that may or may not be productive in moving us forward. It's current. It's the way we do business today. But are there other things that might be a little more efficient, that might be a little more effective in helping us take those next steps, realizing that my second, third, and fourth graders on the soccer team, how can I get that scholarship to pay for the education in college instead of saying, hey, I've got eight

more years to let the child grow and develop into a person. And then when they get to that point, we'll be able to deal with the options and the realities. When we're only dealing with down the road in major changes that might or might not come about, you bring in additional uncertainty. And so some of that uncertainty is something we see coming, but how we approach that uncertainty in that period of getting to actually doing it makes a difference. And the function of our staff, Mrs. Summerfield is sitting in the former police chief's office. and when the police chief moved out of that office the director of community development and planning moved into that office and then we did some construction in the city and built an

annex on city hall and did some other facilities and now it's the park and recs office where mr summerfield is the office has been repurposed three times for very different functions and that's probably what we're looking at moving forward how are we repurposing and keeping How are we building new things to make things better? That's what the comprehensive improvement plan, the capital improvement plan, is designed to do. Us to recommend projects that if the city implements them, makes things better in the future. It didn't throw out anything that we were doing. It didn't destroy anything unless we need to tear down a building to replace it. So as I look at this, we have a challenge, but it's a challenge that's looking at how do we move forward,

and there's going to be a lot of debate on that, especially at the city council, because there they get to have 25,000 different opinions that they can weigh in on, and I don't know that we have to deal with all of that input to say this is the right thing to do that we're going to send to them so I think you've got a solid base are there changes that we want to make let's hit on those are there things that you think we shouldn't be recommending that don't fit the current climate mr. nappy let

James Featherme just make one maybe a couple comments you talked about making things better yes we're also talking about preserving capability that's deteriorating as well things with a big dollar things right now are in that category right the fire station the property yard arguably the Willard Sherwood Center we look at the deterioration and the green acres site and and then making things better yes we have community expectations we live in a different world now than when the city was founded and and the expectations are higher for what services and facilities should be made available. Certainly education facilities need to step up. It's not just preserving what we have. Those aren't good enough in today's education environment.

There really are some of both, right? But a lot of it still we're talking about some of the big bucks projects are preserving where our investments are today. Making some things better? Sure. Absolutely.

Matthew RiceBut these

James Featherprojects are also intertwined. You're not going to do one without doing the other, right? You're not going to rebuild green acres to get just green acres.

Paul Cunninghamyou've got a new library you've got a new police station you've got a new annex on city hall those were major steps that were made that are functional at the moment they won't be at some time in the future but they're functional at the moment which allows us to go with a community center a fire station a property yard and focus on those kinds of things and then we focus on schools to keep them current and up to date and functional into the future because they're major periodic investments but none of that deals with replacement of sewers or redoing brick sidewalks downtown or all of the other maintenance things that come into the rest of the infrastructure and it says

James Featheras well we don't have to comment on those any longer but it's still competition for scarce

Matthew RiceI think one of our successes actually is sewers. It's wastewater sewer and the maintenance schedule that they're on. That's one of the most impressive things that I've seen about the city is the degree to which public works and the stormwater utility is able to diagnose problems before they become five times as expensive to fix. And we see that constantly. We get updates via text message every morning about roads that will be partially blocked based on some infrastructure that's being repaired, and that's being repaired at a fraction of the cost it would be if it were to crumble and need emergency help. I remember looking at Mr. Summers and recommending strongly that we do something to invest money in a surveillance capability,

a GIS based program that would allow us to be able to look at things like this and it's been wildly successful so maybe some things that we do recommend are listened to and implemented and it may not always happen at city council level it may be happening by really really good staff that hear good ideas and frankly we do spend a lot of time on master plans We spent a huge amount of effort in us small area plans and We have an implementation group that meets to figure out how to implement those and Maybe that's the kind of effort. We need more of people that are meeting on a regular basis to Look at that plan and say how do we put this into action and so um anyway, I think that's all my thoughts for now and I should

I commend you for making me think about a lot. We're lucky that we have you here on the commission. You have seen so many different changes in the city over time that most of us were not even resident here for. That's quite valuable. So we need to make sure that we always have that.

Paul CunninghamI would second that comment because I remember the intersection of 50 and 123 being closed because of flooding. It hasn't happened recently. There are things like that that are major steps forward and are to be commended. So we just need to keep it up.

James FeatherAll right. Let's try to bring it back to what we want to do between now and the next meeting to put together some recommendations. Comments from each of you about where you'd like to see this go. Happy to work offline with Mr. Napdy and Ms. Lockhart to frame something.

Matthew RiceI've had notes of my own. Think of three high priority things from the CIP and think of three things that should be lower priorities. And then think of anything that we're missing. That's what you know your question. I've had that kind of in my mind. And certainly I really do think the property yard, the Willard Sherwood Center and Station 3 are both necessary based on their connections to everything else happening, but also the potential problem of what if we ignore this or put this off. I don't think any of those three we can afford to push off into the future based on plans that are already underway and money spent. So those look to be three things for me at least that are high priority.

James FeatherYeah, I think building on your final comment there, it gets to what Ms. Lockhart was talking about too, making a compelling case to support these perhaps better than we have in the past. Not that they're not going to get built, but it's not clear that we presented the urgency that we see. Some of the information we've heard recently, of course. Other comments?

Paul CunninghamI support that.

James FeatherYou're happy for us to take it offline at this point? Mr. Napdy, what have you heard?

NaptystaffOkay, yeah, sorry. I'll just summarize. Anybody

James Featherwant to go back over some of the things we've just to refresh us where we started some of the things that came up in our prior meeting?

NaptystaffOkay, so I'm just jotting down notes on what I'm hearing. But, yeah, we'll go back really quick if you want to. I'll focus on the general capital comments and the project comments. But related to what we heard before, support external funding and seek new opportunities for external funding, leverage to deal on properties to offset costs for other projects. We'll talk about some more of that tonight with Fire Station 3. That quote, invest in what makes people want to live here and consider longer-term changes when prioritizing short-term or partial

Matthew Riceimprovements.

NaptystaffWhat's not in here, I think what Commissioner Lockhart was talking about, comments that we had last year about protecting previous investments by supporting projects that continue to implement previous planning efforts. We had two that kind of touched on that. It sounds like that might be something we want to bring back or rephrase for this year. I

Kirsten Lockhartwas just going to say, and also adding one more bullet here about that a lot of these are revenue generating projects. so to look at them in the context of long-term payoff

James FeatherA lot of them are some of them are parks once maybe

Matthew RiceIn an indirect way almost everything we do to improve the city's You know feeding into property values that feeds into our budget and there that's maybe that's a direct connection but certainly with parks There is revenue to generate I made fruitless arguments to a previous city council 12 13 years ago about putting in a swimming facility and and blank looks just like what in the world the insurance costs for a facility, the operating costs just in this, you know, strategy. And, no, it has maybe a 10-year payoff. There's a huge amount of revenue generated from renting lane space, and there's almost an unlimited demand. So there are ways that these generate revenue when it's real. And with a commission of parks, kind of a body that now exists that will be able to work with parks,

a foundation that will be able to generate gifts through bequests or donations. We didn't have that ability before. And so there are definitely things to think about in terms of being able to generate revenue from things like the Willard Sherwood Center that we do build.

James FeatherAnd the other half of the revenue generating equation is cost avoidance. well. We talked about potential downsides long term for property yard deterioration and continued deferral of that potential fire station issues. You talked about accreditation, insurance, and so forth. That's the other half of the equation. Let me go back to the other list, if you please. Yes. The next slide was previous here, right? Is that correct?

NaptystaffNo, the next slide

James Featheris project

Naptystaff-specific. Okay, yeah, yeah. So I guess one thing I would ask is if the commission supports all of these comments, because these are the more general ones. When we get to the more project-specific ones, I think we have some different opinions and there's kind of a lot to cover.

Speaker 1I think to the point Ms.

Tassos McCarthyLockhart made, is there some world where we should make a general recommendation, like when considering the magnitude of some of these large-scale projects, the property yard, the Sherwood Center, the fire station, to not look at those projects in a vacuum and try to be dynamic and consider future needs and cross-functionality, trying to look around the bend as to not be moving three different people through the same office because we didn't really think about what it was going to look like in a couple years. Yep.

James FeatherDid that capture? I mean, we can work on the words offline.

Matthew RiceYeah, I completely agree. I think it was a good thought. My mind, you know, went toward other projects that have three or four interested parties, and certainly the acquisition of the property on the west, you know, it's been discussed by schools. It's been discussed by Parks and Rec. It's been discussed by the fire department. It's lots of eyes on that as a potential acquisition and something that we could do in the city, but we don't have a mechanism for facilitating that discussion. other than things that happen in back rooms by you know a handful of people it would be helpful if there was a way to sort of talk about the mutual uses or interests in these and maybe i'd leave it up to miss law cart to figure out the wording for that good thought that's kind of still

running circles around my brain.

Kirsten LockhartI mean, for installation planning, you'd call it the concept of operations. What is going to happen in that place or in that building or at this time? And then once you know that, then everybody who's a stakeholder in that can come and participate. So, you know, where, to Mr. Cunningham's point about master planning, that's great, happening in a vacuum. So I'd have to think more about, you know, what the staff impacts of that are, what that looks like, who champions that. But, and this isn't a knock on, you know, the current staff. It's hard to not to know what you don't know. But, you know, to your point that it's historically been rare, it's about to become not rare. So, you

Matthew Riceknow, I think a good example tonight was just the realization that South Street extension will have a major impact on station 3 and their ability to potentially get in and out why didn't I why isn't that been a central thought of mine before I recognize my own deficits as I start to age and my kids frequently remind me that I am eligible to join the senior center that's typically the argument ender i don't like to hear that but i don't think about these things and and obviously we've talked about south street extension multiple times it involves the county it involves the city it involves you know police and fire there's six different groups i haven't ever thought about its impact as that road continues

through adjacent it's a road fire already uses to get into their lot crossing another parcel so it is directly an impact but yeah maybe it's you know better governance maybe it's empowering staff to do more kind of reaching out to other departments maybe more you know implementation groups like I understand and Ms. Denny leads for the small area plans, and we need more of that. And it would be quite helpful, I think, if we had a practice of doing that.

NaptystaffOkay. So these are three that we've added, and as Chair for the said, we can reword these and get back to you. So in combination with the four general capital comments that we had previously, are we okay with keeping all four of these? And do we want to add anything else? And then I'll also go to the next slide in a minute, and we'll talk about the specific project mentioned. This was a comment Chair Feather made with the fuel station as the example, questioning making sure that we are thinking about future larger scale projects as we're the shorter term.

Kirsten LockhartI might just say then, consider longer term plans in front of us and short term

James Featherimprovements. Yeah, we can use that as an example, but it's a pretty big investment in the property yard. Yeah, I used to go away. Changes were throwing me. Yeah. Okay. And even in that context on very broad terms, some of the potential integrations and interactions that we haven't really addressed before as well could fall into that. Some are maybe specific investments, but some are the big picture of how we're going to keep all the balls in the air, take advantage of the space, get some of the real estate that we need to accomplish some of these things anyway, keep things moving. Okay.

NaptystaffSo we have the four from the previous side, the three that we've added. And now if we could step through these and see if we want to carry any of these forward, if there's any that are conflicting, See if we want to do anything with them. It's the first timing for the Van Dyke master plan invitation. We had some mixed comments on that I think some of it Commissioner Rice you've mentioned today, but how is coordinating with the village Sherwood and the blend of our improvements? Do we want to say anything about that specifically?

James FeatherWell, I mean that's the message right? Let's do right

Matthew Ricedo them together I don't think we lengthen the bullet, but I think directly citing connection to two other major projects that are already underway I mean, everything's connected there. Yeah, we shouldn't treat these

James Featherin isolation. We're in a vacuum. Okay. That's an example of that message.

NaptystaffTiming for the property yard redevelopment. I think this was more questions last time. Is there anything you want to say about that? We have one now where we're talking about the consequence of deferring. I think that's what some of this was getting at.

Matthew RiceYeah, there's potentially massive consequences. We just line up the 2016 FEMA boundaries with the 2023, and we can see how they – and 2006, I should say, in 2023. There have been significant changes even over a short period of time in terms of the flooding of that area, and it's not a timing. I think if we did choose a more urgent word or message, there would need to be something for this particular bullet more than any other that would express a little more urgency. The consequences of not moving forward with a plan for the property yard are potentially disastrous.

James FeatherYeah, but again, risk assessment is not just about consequence, it's about likelihood, and then comparing to other risks that we have. And we're not in a position to make that judgment, but we can certainly emphasize the perception of the important consequences, the decision on the overall risk, probability and consequence is outside our purview, but directionally we need to keep moving on this. Right? And based on your expertise, for example.

NaptystaffThe next one, alternative funding for school facility improvements. I don't think this is directly addressed anywhere else. We should have a comment about external funding. I don't know if that is adequate for this one if we want to separately address it.

James FeatherI mean, there's a lot of confidence that the legislature will lack this year to support the additional revenue generation that we're talking about. If we're talking about something else in terms of sponsorships at schools, I don't know that that's not on other people's radar already. I'm not sure it should be a priority for us.

Speaker 4I think maybe if you could go back to the –

Kirsten LockhartI think this was – what we were saying was we support legislative action, right, for alternative tax structures for schools. But that's kind of outside the purview. you're considering when to slot in the school improvements maybe a few in the weeds for this conversation okay

Naptystaffand we can ex revise this to say external and alternative uh and if we want to provide examples while commission is presenting city council then we can get more

James Featherdirect on that i think we're pretty confident that there's already that support on the council. Anyway.

NaptystaffGeneral support for stormwater and wastewater projects. We haven't talked about that much.

James FeatherI don't know if we need to. I mean, that's

Kirsten Lockhartdone.

Matthew RiceLet's largely out of steel. When something's going so well, maybe we don't say anything about it and just let it keep going.

James FeatherBut we have the stormwater utility now, and it's their job. We use an external funding source. We

Matthew Ricedo and it's it's been a great success and the sheer amount of money that we're saving the future versions of ourselves is just Mind-blowing. I talked to staff about this. It's some It's going very very well. It's important the infrastructure and the cost of the infrastructure if it were to be neglected would be huge and And things are going well. And I think there was some effort when I first joined the commission this in 2020 where we discussed this. And it's resulted in some changes. And obviously the stormwater utility is going very well. We definitely want this to continue, but maybe we don't include it at the same high level unless there's a threat to pulling funding from it. And I don't sense at all.

James FeatherI'm not sure if there are any... There is an item in the SIP. Not many. Most of them are moved to the maintenance aspect, right?

NaptystaffCorrect.

James FeatherMr. Gunnian?

Paul CunninghamSome of this ends up in the interesting discussion that may or may not be useful, I gather, the council, where at one point we talked about having a water plant, and if we were which was a strong city priority, what would the cost of that be today? I think we took the right steps and avoided a major bullet. Now when we're talking stormwater and some of this, I think we have taken the right steps and we have avoided a bullet. Part of what we're looking at in here that we have had moved out of the CIP, we're not talking about trash trucks at the moment, But council is talking about enterprise funding, so to speak, or making a separate fund for trash collection, which would, I presume, then also not only pick up trash collection,

but the replacement of the vehicles that go into trash collection and making that a separate build item along with property taxes, which would take it out of the budget. So some of these items are changing, and our discussion is talking about current events as in a changing playing field, which may or may not be beneficial as we're moving forward to keeping us solid in the recommendations we're making. I guess we're not talking about trash trucks, but we're also not talking about trash collection and deferring that cost to a different part of the budget for collection. And just like stormwater, we found it worked with one thing. Just like a number of years ago, we found out instead of paying cash for vehicles,

if we started leasing vehicles and buying them after five years, we could buy a lot more vehicles for a number of years. And so we did. And these are part of the evolution of budget management to get maximum bang for the buck. So we're at some of these points, I think. where the council has got outside resources and getting recommendations on different approaches to some of this that we are not necessarily providing input or usable input in because we don't know the full playing field of what they're dealing with. So while I think those are excellent projects and those are great steps forward, are we in keeping with making those steps THE RECOMMENDATION.

James FeatherTHE LARGEST ITEM IN THE WASTEWATER BUDGET IS JUST PAYING OUR SHARE OF THE NORMAL COAL PLANT YOU KNOW BY BY A LARGE FRACTION THAT DOESN'T NEED OUR INPUT

Speaker 8WE'RE GOING TO GET A BILL

James FeatherOKAY LET'S MOVE ON

NaptystaffTIMING AND SCALE OF FIRE STATION THREE REPLACEMENT WE HAD QUESTIONS ABOUT THAT TONIGHT EXCELLENT DISCUSSION ONE OF THE ONE OF THE THREE PROJECTS MENTIONED HERE the urgent projects so i assume

Matthew Ricethat's

Naptystaffbeing covered unless we want to say anything specific about it

Matthew Ricewell i think emphasizing the complexity of you know we can't take a building down before anyway it's there's a sequence that happens the cost of temporarily housing fire department else where I was told $5 million just to do that. It's not feasible to relocate. There's a particular sequence that happens, and it needs to happen in a careful way. The station's not in good condition. It's important to do, and I think the words on the yellow slide, it's it's again it's probably less to me about timing than the sequence I don't know maybe timing is the right word timing is probably the right word it's just a complicated replacement that has to happen in a very specific way and I think delaying delaying the start

of that would cause significant issues in terms of the department's ability Anyway, their accreditation process that they've just gone through happens every five years, and they will conceivably, if this is put off, their next accreditation will happen and notice sort of the deficits. So it's not something, I think, that can be put off at all. I think it needs to be addressed soon and not something we should defer.

NaptystaffAnything else on fire station 3? Support for the West Drive property yard acquisition. This was the general statement about these opportunities not coming very often. We should take advantage of it. It's still in the process. I

James Featherthink, but this weighs into the integration of potential other uses and staging and sequencing and opportunity.

Naptystaffwant to specifically mention because the other board projects that were on that slide we are mentioning somewhere else that when we are not

Matthew Riceyou had given us instructions to choose three and so

James Featherthat was my request but that was three from each of you okay yeah three from each

Speaker 4I

Naptystaffthink we have an agreement, but not all the CIP funds have been allocated. It's all dependent on the county finishing the new facility they're building down off of Fairfax County Parkway. My understanding has been delayed several times, and I believe it's still two or three years away. My

Speaker 4understanding as the Chair of the Planning Commission that that's the same discussion we had. But I was Chair of the Planning Commission one time.

NaptystaffYes. Yeah. So I didn't know if

James Featherwe were any closer to it. It's still important. It's still a once in a rare opportunity, once in a rarity opportunity. And it gives a lot of latitude down the road. So it's an investment in the future.

Matthew RiceOkay. I think we should list support for continuing the acquisition and use of that parcel and some sort of discussion amongst city staff and others interested parties about the best use of it. Because I know it's been discussed by schools, it's been discussed by fire, it's been discussed by public works.

James FeatherThere's public works, parks,

Matthew Riceparks, yeah. Okay.

NaptystaffContinue investment in the Wilder Sherwood Community Center. So we're already mentioning that, but I don't know. So looking at these comments and the new comments we've added, we don't have anything similar to the comments we had last year about continuing investments and efforts that are already underway. So I think I've heard that talked about several times tonight. a comment that addresses that.

James FeatherI certainly can't hurt to say that. I think our discussion this evening sort of elevated the Willard Sherwood beyond just we've spent some money on it already, we should keep going. We're looking at it as part of an integrated redevelopment upgrade. building that whole corridor, facilities for the citizens, the seniors, families.

NaptystaffOkay. So it sounds to me like instead of having a general statement as we had last year now, for having a more specific statement and identifying specific projects that are in that situation, recommended continuing investment in these projects that we've already invested in and we're specifically identifying property yard station three and willard sherwood

James Featheryou feel

Kirsten Lockharti think that probably strikes the right tone because otherwise you run into inviting the argument of like well you're just telling us to spend money because we already spent money whereas what we're trying to say is there was a reason that money was spent these are good projects please finish them yeah

Matthew Ricereally as part of the why do I want to live in the city of Fairfax versus you know living in Oakton or Vienna or Falls Church it's you know we don't have our own community centers in the sense that we have a place to recreate a place for seniors a place to hold community meetings that's are a lot of reasons why it will enhance quality of life in the city that's always been part of the vision and so I think Willard Sherwood is about the need to continue making the city of Fairfax an attractive place to live it's you know it's part of our bragging about how the city is great it's um anyway there's it's certainly more than just we've already spent a lot of money but i don't think we can ignore the cost of a u-turn particularly given the county's recent

warnings uh to us it just would be disastrous um sorry that's a little dark i just i think about these financial issues and the cost of us backing out with trusted partners. But I think in a more positive light, it certainly will significantly add to the quality of life in the city. The meeting space, the recreation opportunities, the senior center adjacent to the Sherwood Center adjacent to Van Dyke Park. There are just a lot of reasons why that location and that use is important. And it will continue making the city a nice place to live. So anyway.

James FeatherAnd the state of the current facilities.

NaptystaffOkay. Okay. And the last one was questions about the cost and need for turf conversion projects. There was a question to Ms. Summerfield about that. It was about the Catherine

James FeatherJohnson one, but the other ones at the high school that, you know, to me, I'm not sure sufficient risk assessments done on that, but we didn't really talk about it. We didn't have anybody from the schools in to address that.

Matthew RiceRight. I think the ADA compliance issues with the present is unacceptable and has been for a decade. It's just Catherine Johnson. Catherine Johnson, that's right. and I think the summer fell you know correctly notes its positioning between Kuttner and the school and it's some you know ended in the trails nearby the nature kind of underneath the tree canopy there that we want to that's spectacular it's such a great place to to walk so it is kind of like the Sherwood to will the Sherwood centers kind of in a key location within an activity field is a key location and aligning the streets as she mentioned to get traffic sorted and that will help deal with parking issues but it just I think again

it's a complex project that involves undoing some real difficult issues about the fill underneath the present field and its poor drainage and that's why the cost is large and

James Featherthe right facility gets the Miss Lockhart's comment was about how we can actually benefit from it.

Kirsten LockhartAnd it becomes a compliance issue now that the county is offering middle school sports. If we don't have a facility that can accommodate the students who want to participate, it puts the school system in a bad sport, too.

Tassos McCarthyAnd I think you might add, you know, the Camp Washington small area plan, right? right up next to it, right? When you open the Fairfax County Parkway through the

Speaker 4shopping center, you're going to change the traffic pattern in that area.

Matthew RiceYeah, we spent a lot of time talking about the connection between Camp Washington North through a corridor that would end up at Kuttner. Because right now Kuttner is kind of a very well it's more lightly used kind of quasi private neighborhood park and it could be there's thoroughfare connection at camp washington that invites more recreation for that

James Feathermaking a broader community asset

Naptystaffokay okay so we have something to work with um we have those initial for comments, the ones that we've added. Sorry, didn't mean to step in. So Chair Feather and I and Vice Chair Lockhart, if available, we'll get together this week and try to refine these, get those out to you, give you a chance to look over them hopefully this weekend, and then we'll package them up and have them finalized for the public hearing on January 26th.

James FeatherOur deadline will be an agenda package for the middle of next...

NaptystaffYes, our agenda package is to go to Tina on Tuesday. So we're probably going to ask you to look at them over the weekend, and then we'll finalize them on Monday.

James FeatherThank you all. Really good discussion. Okay. Thank you all. We will reconvene our regular meeting and go to the staff reports.

NaptystaffThank you again, Chair Feather, members of the Planning Commission. On January 6th, the city council had a work session meeting. The only item was discussion of the Parks and Recreation Master Plan, which was on hiatus for quite a while. It's still in the phase of collecting information. Essentially, their consultant had some interview questions for city council so they could provide feedback. So we'll be following this project as it starts to re-initiate itself, and we'll probably

Matthew Ricehave some information before you in the next couple of months.

Naptystaffthen tomorrow city council a couple of items of interest they'll be taking their final consideration on the board and commissioner handbook we talked about this back in the fall a couple of times chair feather made some comments about it once that's adopted that we will share it with all of you i think as chair feather stated is it's intended for new members but we'd like to share with you anyway just to make sure we're all kind of on the same footing they'll also be having a public hearing no action needed on the Fern Street connector project as you might recall this was a project that was specifically identified in the Camp Washington's small area plan to pedestrian connection and it's had to

engage page set up for a while so they'll be wrapping up the planning phase for this and moving toward construction and additionally there'll be a consideration of additional funds and a word of contract for the George Snyder trail this is also a project that's mentioned in the comprehensive plan for your upcoming meeting on January 26 we'll be having our public hearing on the capital improvement program of leaves as we've discussed you will have a presentation on the urban forest master plan you just received a presentation on that in December as you may recall but the public hearing is scheduled on this on January 27th with City Council and we are going to ask this planning commission to provide a formal recommendation to them you won't necessarily need a public

we're doing that is that there are recommendations in that plan that will affect the comprehensive plan and ultimately you will be asked to incorporate those recommendations into the comprehensive plan but once the plan is adopted you don't have really have the opportunity to change it so we want to make sure that you're saying that you're okay with this plan and then it'll be adopted and at some point it'll come back to you to be incorporated in the comprehensive

Matthew Riceplan

Naptystaffand then lastly you'll receive a presentation on the annual report as you always do with the second and updates to the implementation guides. And all that will be forwarded to City Council

Matthew Riceonce you approve it.

NaptystaffAs we discussed during our CIP presentation, you will be presenting your recommendations on the CIP to City Council at their February 3rd work session. Take a look at your calendar, see if that's available for you. We're going to ask you to confirm who can come to that meeting at the next meeting on January 26th. and then February 9 you received the email this is a regular planning commission night you'll be having a joint meeting with the economic development authority this will start at 6pm it'll be before our regularly scheduled meeting which will then occur at 7pm and we'll get back to you with more information about the topics that will be covered we're still working at that with them so that's all

I have for our staff report tonight

James Featherany questions for staff okay Commission comments, anything from you, Mr. McCarthy? No,

Speaker 1sir.

James FeatherMr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamCongratulations on the re-election of our two leaders and Happy New Year. Glad to see everybody back.

Kirsten LockhartThank

James Featheryou.

Kirsten LockhartLockhart? Nothing for the group. Thank you.

Matthew RiceNothing. Happy New

James FeatherYear. Nothing further from me. The Board of Architectural Review first meeting of the calendar year was canceled, so I guess they'll be meeting next week which I presume they will meet because that's the meeting that they elect their own chair and vice chair but so nothing to report from the bar as well a happy New Year to you all thank you for being sorry

Kirsten Lockhartnothing from the fig yet either

James Featherso nothing from the facilities and interior no whatever thank you for stepping up to do that we are adjourned Thank you.